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I feel weird after throwing out there that theory that analyzed the Aoi->Chisa theory to now being against it Anime hyper

. But after all these episodes it's hard for me to believe that.

-How did she do such a perfect disguise of her, not only on perfect appearance and bracelet (she showed her forbidden action after Great Gozu was killed, so if she was switched back then were the bracelets changed too?) but also voice actress? The series isn't so commited to same-face (Junko and Mukuro), and we have to keep in mind this happens between a sleep round, there's practically no time to do such a perfect switch and nobody to help her (and I've heard something about a Make-Up-Artist in some spinoff manga or something but from an anime perspective there's no setup and it's an isolated game, such a reveal would feel random and upsetting).

-The viewpoint of Aoi's actions, mostly from these last two episodes: when she finds out Kyoko's notebook in ep10 or falls sleep concerned about Makoto killing himself (and thinking that to herself, not directed to other characters), it's so fixed on a first-person point of view that it's meant to be her honest feelings and discoveries and an audience surrogate, so I highly doubt they are teasing us to this level.

-As I said, neither Makoto nor Munakata seem important characters to survive the aftermath after we know the person who is killed everytime doesn't depend on one person (or Monokuma)'s will but just proximity to a monitor, Makoto would be dead if it wasn't for Juuzo, so Munakata could be subjected to the same thing (and if both bracelets are hijacked to not die, they should be hints about it), and if monitoring the game was sooo important for Chisa that she needed to switch with Aoi, she would not risk dying so easily if it just happens Munakata was the attacker in one turn. Even if you want to argue that what I said and Aoi picking Kyoko's notebook was a trap because of Junko's "risk of losing" philosophy, it feels a little like a stretch, I think it's just honest.

-If as the reviewer said Kyoko suspected about it after re-meeting with her, it would feel very out of character for her to just accept that Aoi was killed and switched without any reaction whatsoever.

-This is an anime, but not one meant to be rewatched over and over until we get all the tiny little clues that may be hidden in a zoomed screened animation for less than half a second, in fact we are probably privileged of having a streaming service that allows us to rewatch the episodes and pause them when this is being broadcast on TV in Japan, its primary audience. That means, those kinds of tiny clues that you have to be obsessed to find out wouldn't feel right for a general audience who may guess but only watch it each week, they would still feel that such a twist is pretty random and out of nowhere, for that you need more clear satisfying clues that can still be perfectly ambiguous but more overt than that, and there hasn't been any, not even with her dialogue, reactions, double-meanings or actions. If it's true, all Chisa did this time was... hanging around and that's it. (also, if she sent that email to Ryota, when did she since she was arguing with him before he received it?) Those kind of minuscule details of the switch I was considering them because I thought there would be more clear motivated hints later, but at this point I think they're either mistakes or red herrings for nitpickers like us Anime hyper

-If we suspect about her that means everything she's done since the switch (whenever it was) is totally fake, and that's a huge betrayal of your (and Makoto's) emotions. Don't get me wrong, it can be perfectly addressed and fit in the right way like many shows have, but that's the key word, "address", that twist would be lethal emotionally and would need a ton of justification and time for its existence (both the clues and hints as how it affects the characters involved (mostly Makoto) and how it fits in everything), and honestly, could you really do that in only 25 minutes? Unless that 12th Despair Arc Episode is a continuation of that one, it's just impossible with all the other subplots and character arcs that need to be concluded in the air, and even with two it's hard for that not to be rushed, and this is a show that has been commited to its slow contemplative pacing even in these last episodes (this one, for example, has been fairly calm at both the video, Juuzo and Makoto's discussion and Juuzo's death), so at this point I can't think of any letal and game-changing twist like that.

doubleO7 wrote:

This could mean a couple things. It could just be a mistake, I suppose. They could have preemptively delayed it, anticipating production issues with the intention of rescheduling it's broadcast for a later date, saving it for some kind of event, or by simply making it a de-facto "home video exclusive" episode. Another theory I've seen pop up recently is that, realizing Future's finale needed more breathing room than Despair, they changed the 12th episode of Despair into a 13th episode of Future, thereby making Despair only 11 episodes long as the earlier rumors suggested, with this change in production perhaps not happening until after those initial episode counts were revealed. Not sure how plausible that last one is, but it's still an interesting possibility to consider.

One argument in favor of "maybe they changed it" is that if you click on the descriptions of each of the Blu-Ray box sets, the first three say things like: "6話収録未来編:7-9話絶望編:7-9話" ("6 Episode Compliation Mirai-hen: episodes 7-9 Zetubou-hen: episodes 7-9"), whereas the fourth BD box set says: "6話収録未定" ("6 Episode Compilation Not Yet Fixed.") So the BDs could support a "hey, the last box has six episodes, but not necessarily a 3-3 split" theory.

The problem with this theory is the DVD releases, which are 12 volumes 2 episodes per and strictly divided into Future Arc and Despair Arc releases.

EDIT: And just after I posted this, it seems like printed Japanese TV listings now show instead of episode 12 of the Despair Arc, an episode of 希望編, or Hope Arc. So, yeah, confirmed that the 12th episode of Despair Arc is different. It's the Saturday listing for both on AT-X, which means that it's listing the rerun episodes, as mentioned here. Slightly odd, it lists episode 12 of the Future Arc as the last episode of that show, but doesn't have the ending mark by Hope Arc. (Probably because it's a one-off, not because it's a start of a second season or something.)

I am starting to think that the real mastermind of the killing game was never involved with the remnants of despair and Junko. This killing game looks pre-planned because the whole system is pre-recorded and Monokuma has been pretty much a non-existent during the whole killing game outside of the suicide videos. I would think that someone who is/was a remnant of despair would use Monokuma a whole lot more, as either an AI Monokuma or play Monokuma themselves (like Junko in the first game) since Monokuma is an embodiment of Junko and a source of despair during the first two games.

I'm still trying to work through my own theories on whodunnit, but a couple things I keep coming back to that I don't think have been sufficiently discussed:

- If we assume that Monokuma's introduction was recorded (which it easily could be), then Monaca seems at least complicit in the scheme. Monokuma jumps to Gekkogahara's chair Usami and alters her, and I don't think you can automate a hack like that without AI (which I think we're ruling out now, right?). And that's also the only direct interaction with the cast, at least that I remember.
- Chisa's death is unusual, but that doesn't necessarily implicate her as a mastermind. If we assume that she was specifically targeted as the first victim instead, then the video she was shown could be different from the automatic ones. The recording had some idea of the timing of her "discovery" which means that it might have specifically been set to make her climb the chandelier and tamper with it so it would crash after she died. With enough manipulation, she could even have been the one that moved everyone to the lower levels and put the bracelets on, and still not been the mastermind.

My pet theory is that Izuru is actually the mastermind and he orchestrated it before leaving for Jabberwock Island as revenge for Chiaki. In that scenario, Chisa is the most logical first target due to her setting up Chiaki's death. Getting Tengan on his side would be easy, and Izuru knows that Chisa is a Despair (is he the only person left who knows that?) so he could easily manipulate her. Mr. Talent might even be able to automate the hack since he would assume Gekkogahara would be there. We don't know a lot about what actually motivates Izuru (if anything) so it's a bit of a stretch to know whether he would actually want revenge, but the current Despair episode does open up the possibility.

John Thacker wrote:

EDIT: And just after I posted this, it seems like printed Japanese TV listings now show instead of episode 12 of the Despair Arc, an episode of 希望編, or Hope Arc. So, yeah, confirmed that the 12th episode of Despair Arc is different. It's the Saturday listing for both on AT-X, which means that it's listing the rerun episodes, as mentioned here. Slightly odd, it lists episode 12 of the Future Arc as the last episode of that show, but doesn't have the ending mark by Hope Arc. (Probably because it's a one-off, not because it's a start of a second season or something.)

I just came across this recently. That's pretty neat that they're doing a title-changing one-off to (probably) tie both series together and cap off the whole Hope's Peak saga. Hopefully they've got enough time to do it in a satisfactory way.

Just as long as it's not some non-canon, alternate ending based on Yasuhiro's "everyone lives and they're partying without me!" prediction.

Having just watched the 11th episode of Despair arc, it continues to interest me how these two halves have worked in tandem. And yeah, the general hints outside of characters outright saying who it has to be before a reveal, seems to have been pointing at her. Actually, an interesting perhaps detail is that my initial suspect was Tenga, I just thought that some of what Monokuma said sounded like an older person, like calling them millennials.

But Jacob just blew my mind with the detail that Aoi at first carries Naegi via piggyback, but later carries him not too different to how Chisa carried the students in the first episode of Despair Arc.

^ I've watched the times both Chisa and Aoi take someone and Aoi always takes Makoto via piggyback (the first time in ep2 is just a little clumsy because Makoto couldn't properly hold on to her shoulders, but the others ones (ep5, ep8) are still piggyback), and Chisa in Despair Arc takes them with one arm or with a string or something, so I'm not sure what you mean.

So it seems to be confirmed that the mastermind spoiler[is in fact Tengan].

So with both Despair and Future arcs ended and comparing them, I just realized something I thought was a neat difference. spoiler[Class 77 is a lively, friendly group, looking forward to what they plan to do out of school, even if it's going to be driving the world into ruin. Also going to note that with Junko, the original final boss of the series, she took such joy in despair and believed that it would win out.

Then you have Future which focused on the branch leaders. A lot of them are noted to be rather flawed and dysfunctional working with each other, like Seiko and Ruruka's feud in particular focusing on Ruruka's trust issues, Sakakura being rather aggressive and assholish due to his insecurities over how he failed in the past, Munakata and how he was tricked into trying to kill everyone in order to purge all despair, then you have the last couple of obstacles. Tengan will manipulate people in order to bring about what he considers hope and doesn't seem to mind the cost, whether it's convincing Hajime to give up his character to become Izuru Kamukura or staging a killing game to trick Mitarai. And Mitarai, who now seems to be the final boss of the Hope Peak arc, has possibly been broken by what Tengan has said and done and is trying to spread hope by forcing it upon people through brainwashing.

In essence, we have gone from hopeful despairs to despairful hope.]

..................

spoiler[Tengan: "Hummmm Mitarai has developed a Hope program that can brainwash the world to be peaceful and I want him to use it, but he seems concerned and wary of the idea. Now what should I do~~?]

spoiler[The moderate: Seriously talk with him about the necessity of it even if I have to point out actual tragedies happening right now so he gets the point.]
spoiler[The extreme: Steal his mobile and program and doing it on my own since once finished he's not necessary. However I want to entrust him the hope of the world, I don't want to do that.]
spoiler[The obvious logical: Set up a overly complicated killing game with all the powerful and influential hopetful members of the Future Foundation where they distrust and kill each other or even themselves with a brainwashing video just to show Mitarai an illustrative close example so he may do it.]

spoiler[Sure, I will take that one... Woops, Mitarai coincidentally appeared and was included into the game (even though I moved all the people from one base to another and I could have just taken him away)! Silly me, he could have died and everything would have gone to waste, hohoho!"]

so i guess that Ryota messed up the original plan of him not being involved in the killing game by being in it could be the reason for the incorrect survivor count (though it doesn't account for him having a kill code). Also, who would have thought that the real enemy was Ryota but for a completely different reason than what everyone (myself included) believed. It would be interesting to see how the former remnants of despair (especially Nagito and Izuru/Hajime) are going to react to this new "hope" after being in despair for so long.
Looking forward to what this new "hope" brings in the finale thursday.

I am sort of assuming that one of Junko Enoshima's comments about "Now it's time for What the Housekeeper (Maid) Saw" is a reference to the English title of Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel 家族八景 Kazoku Hakkei. Same author as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Paprika, both adapted into anime (and other forms.) It's sort of a stretch because what Junko said was a Japanese translation of the English title, not the original Japanese title (which means "Eight Family Scenes.) However, given the love for references and how classic a work it is, I still think it is one. (The book concerns a woman who works as a maid to avoid revealing her psychic powers to the world, but they still end up involving her in her family's circumstances.)

It also could, I suppose, just refer to that fairly common phrase, as a couple of popular TV dramas have had similar titles in Japan, especially the long-running 家政婦は見た, originally based on a short story by crime fiction author Seichō Matsumoto. Now that I think about it, it may be more based on that.

Is the Hope Arc episode being counted as the conclusion of the Despair Arc in the weekly ranking, because it feels like the Despair Arc came to an end with episode 11, when it came full circle to the second game at the end of the episode.

I want to add to this thread if this is where we're supposed to talk about the Hope arc, the ending credits for the Despair arc kind of take on a new meaning after what we found out about how AI Chiaki came into being. What at first just seems like a sort of memorial for the human Chiaki and her tragic death also takes on a second meaning. It's also symbolic of the birth of AI Chiaki by literally being formed from everyone's memories. It's sad as well as heartwarming.

Treecko Tempo wrote:

Is the Hope Arc episode being counted as the conclusion of the Despair Arc in the weekly ranking, because it feels like the Despair Arc came to an end with episode 11, when it came full circle to the second game at the end of the episode.

Though given how the focus shifted to mainly focus on class 77 without the Future arc characters getting to do much, it does feel more fitting to count it with the Despair arc than the Future arc, even if the Hope arc continues where the Future arc left off.

Well... where to even start on this..

So, I guess firstly it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I enjoyed seeing Class 77 again, something I felt we didn't get enough of in Despair arc, so there's that. I also like, for the characters it did show, they had an ending that made sense for them. Naegi being headmaster of Hope's Peak, Class 77 living the rest of their days on the island, it made sense.

But damn if I'm not feeling underwhelmed. I think the mastermind identity was pretty weak. Tengen itself isn't that bad, but Mitarai being the big bad at the end was just sloppy for me. Sure, in and of itself it was fine, but the guy just had no real threat. I mean, this is by far one of if not the wimpiest character(s) in Danganronpa, and the resolution was just talking him down, without really getting into and confronting his own idea of hope. I found myself just hoping for a twist somewhere, because it all felt so straightforward and un-Danganronpa like. I know this is the ending, so it can't exactly end on a twist, but just something to make it more interesting. It almost feels like he was too afraid to really go at it so just went with the nice, safe option. When you start worrying about how people are going to receive it the quality is always going to come down because the strengths of the series came when he just did his thing, and when you're too afraid to go for it and restrain yourself into writing something that doesn't really play to the strengths of the series it's obviously going to be affected. Ironically, I feel like more people are going to be disappointed due to this than they would have been if he had just gone all out on the ending, because at least then even if it didn't work one could appreciate the attempt. Danganronpa is a lot of things, and it was never the best-written series, but one thing it has never been is uncreative, and that's exactly what I get from this ending. It's uncreative. I don't mean that in an overly-harsh way. Uncreative endings aren't bad, by any means, but they're mostly pretty safe to play.

Aside from that, I think while Despair had some disappointing aspects, Future was actually overall a weak series, whereas Despair was a good one with some flaws. The whole killing game was preposterous, even for Danganronpa standards, there was virtually no reason for it. If he wanted to eliminate the heads he simply could have gassed them, attached the wristbands and then poison them all when they woke up. If he wanted to die along with them, he could have, and if his goal was to cause Mitarai to feel enough despair to activate his hope video, I feel like waking up to find everyone else dead would have achieved that goal pretty well. As the review said, Junko can get away with it because it's Junko - it's established that she doesn't really care if she loses, and it would give her more entertainment than simply just killing them all. Tengen is not Junko. We have no reason to assume he thinks like Junko. Plus, it's not even like the killing game showing Future Foundation was being used to reinvigorate the remaining remnants of despair - the game wasn't even being broadcast. It's like the writing has gone out of it's way to make this whole thing as needlessly complex as possible, which is of course to say, the only reason we have a killing game is because the plot demands we have one, and no other reason. That's disappointing.

What's also disappointing is the decision the have this killing game be such a focus for 3 in general. I would have happily accepted it even taking half or 3/4 of the length of Future to conclude, and the last few episodes focus on SoL and giving each character their conclusion. Hell, I'd be more accepting if both Future and Despair had 11 episodes each and Hope has 2 - one focusing on Class 78 and one focusing on Class 77. Instead, Hope is really just Future Episode 13, and a good portion of it is aken up by ultimately resolving Future's conflict when I genuinely believe it would have been better served just giving them all an ending. We don't know what happens to Asahina, Hakugure, Komaru, Toko, Munakata. For all but the latter, we know they're still alive and help rebuild Hope's Peak, but it would have been nice to see what they may go on to do. Naegi and Kirigiri presumably run the school, but we don't even know how it's going to be successful. I doubt anyone will want to go to Hope's Peak after all that happened there, and is it still focused on "talent", or is it just a normal school this time around? Again, we don't know. Munakata is extremely ambiguous, and we don't have a clue what happened with Haiji from Another Episode. We see Monaka get Hope brainwashed, but nothing long term for her either. Given how much time as been wasted on things that ultimately went nowhere or were relatively uninteresting, it's a shame to see so many loose ends still present.

Speaking of wasted time, Kirigiri being alive is a shame. Not in the sense that I think her dying in this would have been a suitable end for her character arc, I mean, given the redundancy of the game she would be dying for the sake of being a DR1 character dying, but rather her being alive means a significant portion of Future was just wasted needlessly. There was no gambit behind her death. No "gotcha". Her being alive didn't foil the mastermind. I imagine we all went into this expecting none of the DR1 characters to die, and given that the ending played straight to expectations, I truly do not see the point in all the wasted time spent hinting and foreshadowing that a DR1 character would die, only to end up playing that straight to expectations and not actually killing any of them off at the end. Appearing to not play to expectations and then ultimately play to expectations is not a good or clever twist, it's just playing to expectations. Now, that's fine, by itself. I don't think anyone would have cared if the entire killing game came and went with none of us believing a DR1 character would ever die and that they all had plot armour, but to waste time trying to make us believe that they would and then not do that is pretty weak for me. I would have much preferred them to use this time for the ending rather than tell us DR1 characters don't have plot armour when really they did all along. It's not like a good number of people really bought it anyway - from what I saw, the majority expected Kirigiri to be alive anyway. I could understand better if Kodaka was simply afraid of playing to expectations so tried to undo a sense of plot armour for the DR1 characters (which was a failed attempt anyway), but the entire ending has shown that this isn't the case. All that's left was that it was an attempt to create some tension and shock with none of the consequence, and I'm not even going to touch on the laziness and cheapness of using two (and arguably 3) fakeouts.

In any case, I'm still going to miss these characters, despite my belief that most of them have grown stale. The crux with Danganronpa 3 is "did it fail to deliver a satisfying ending"? The answer is no, in that respect it mostly succeeded, but I do think Kodaka has failed in some other respects. There are lessons to be learned in 3. I liked the idea of having 2 episodes a week, but maybe it didn't work out so well logistically, and I feel like he didn't make the most out of using the anime format. I hope V3 isn't going to begin another overarching story, as I feel like Kodaka struggled to manage it well, and I also hope we don't see another Danganronpa series in anime format. It works far better as a game, in my opinion.

I'm not worried for V3, although my hype is somewhat tempered. In any case, I appreciate the ideas here, even if it didn't all come together, and I hope Kodaka learns what didn't work well here and what did, to use in future. And of course, even if the rewatchability is low, discussing and theorising was fun week to week and I'm sort of sad it's now all over. For me, a low 7/10, not a bad series at all.

I dont think I have have seen an anime collapse in quality like this since Gundam 00. Where do you begin? The complete uselessness of the new cast outside of like 3 characters. The Mastermind's ludicrous plans that got ruined by someone talking to the most weak willed person in the history of the franchise?

Who cares if Future Foundation survives when you just spent 13 episodes telling me that it was full of useless morons? Munakata's only ability is to swing a sword, as his leadership was non-existant in this series. Seiko wasnt incompetent but she's also dead. Makoto in the end didn't do anything. Same thing with Hina she didn't do anything other than be Makoto's legs so he could go faster. Whose going to replace Seiko as head of medicine? Weedlord? Weedlord is just going promote Homeopathic medicines! I guess Kyoko and Byakuya are competent but you cant save the world with two people.

The show basically dooms the world then tells you in the last two minutes that everything is fine when you still have a giant cult around the world blowing crap up. Its like Kodaka forgot what he wrote earlier in the show.

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EP. REVIEW: Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Future Arc